My overall take is it's a fun game you'll get plenty of time out of if you end up enjoying the gameplay loop. That said, as someone who played the previous title from the 3DS there are two different perspectives: Someone new or someone who has played the original Fantasy Life.

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So starting from a fresh perspective:

Fantasy Life is an action RPG where you play one of several "Lives", or jobs. Combat jobs, crafting jobs, and gathering jobs. Your objective in the game is a loop of progressing the story to open up more of the world to enable seeing more new stuff and advancing your Lives to access more content.

Put more simply, the game's very progression oriented. Aside from wanting to see new locations and characters your main motivation is to progress the ranks of these jobs, as they require you to do things like defeat certain new monsters or craft a certain array of new tools or obtain certain materials.

There is a creative aspect in that you have an island you can decorate and setup housing in for various NPC allies, with a vast array of setpieces and even terrain/water editing. Your equipment is also pretty simple in stats, and you have slots that let you put on certain clothing/armor as vanity, so you're much more free to customize your character.

Outside of this gameplay there is a story, albeit I can't say it's the biggest deal. It's definitely present and there's a narrative being told.

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So from someone who played the first Fantasy Life:

Broad summary is this is a classic case of the gameplay being widely and hugely improved, but many surrounding elements are far weaker than the original game.

I wanna speak positives first and say the gameplay is leaps and bounds improved in general flow. In the first Fantasy Life you had to pit stop at a Guild Hall (whichever it was called) to change your Life there. In Fantasy Life i you not only can change your Life anywhere, but interacting with anything relevant auto-switches your Life. You have full access to Life benefits at any time.

Fantasy Life i also features full fast travel. Anywhere in the world, including most interiors (Probably all of them) you can just pop open your map and drop yourself at fast travel points, which covers anywhere in the world, outside of deep in dungeon-esque areas. The original Fantasy Life had fast travel points but you had to go to a specific location that took you to a small list of nearby areas, or have purchased homes to let you fast travel to the main towns. It's much easier to get around on a whim in Fantasy Life i.

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So, having played for about 100 hours, the game's very nice if you liked Fantasy Life for the gameplay Life progression element. Excellent even.

Unfortunately, the character writing and story took a backseat, and is highly underdeveloped compared to the original game. So if that was what you liked Fantasy Life for I can't say that all returned.

This isn't to say what characters and story exists is bad, it's just that there's way less focus on it, which ties into gameplay smoothness a bit. The original had some friction in how you had to talk to Life NPCs to get certain Life quests to fully progress, so you had to talk to a list of people a lot. Having to interact more had you getting to know these characters much deeper. You simply aren't getting to know people near as well in Fantasy Life i as you did before. Great if you didn't care too much for it, unfortunate if you did.

Though it occurs to me now that it's possible the Life relevant NPCs might have some things to say if you grab some ranks but I doubt they'll tell anything personal about themselves, can't say for sure though.

The story itself involves much fewer characters. This his harder to describe without a hard parallel-playthrough to pick apart the differences but I think an overall difference is that there's not many character arcs. The original had the conflict between King Erik and his daughter and relations with other nations, Port Puerto's Olivia arc with the role she should play as a leader, Al Maajik's Damien and his whole family dynamic and misunderstandings. Not to mention Butterfly's broader character arc really soaking into the story from start to finish.

The biggest reason Fantasy Life i is weaker in this aspect is purely and solely due to less direct dialogue. This means that it's not a "failing" or that they failed to execute on this aspect, it's that it simply was traded off to facilitate the gameplay being distracted from less. It's the same way how Zelda's Breath of The Wild and Tears of the Kingdom traded off Zelda's famous well crafted linear dungeon design to facilitate the open world exploration aspect.

Good characterization is still around a bit but if you play both games you can tell there's just not near as much meat added to that department as it was in the first game. First game was *real* good at this part, but that requires that you read a lot of dialogue and want to get invested in the characters in the first place. So I can easily see certain people just not really into that and maybe even getting annoyed when it intrudes the game in some parts, like needing to comb around for Life quests and such and the story itself being pretty long-winded. Fantasy Life i happens to provide access to pretty broad content if you choose to explore far into Ginormosia, the big free-exploration area.

That all being said, one place I do think Fantasy Life i underperformed is the world design. It's just not as interesting as it was in the original.

I think the big issue is that the core story areas outside of Ginormosia are very tropical themed even in the breaks from the norm like the forested and beach areas. The original Fantasy Life had some very different and unique feeling locations with well placed and thematic setpieces. The bosses and major ores/trees/fish made each area feel really unique, and it just doesn't feel like Fantasy Life i has the same broad variety. Maybe the fewer enclosed spaces contributes to this.

Ginormosia has to carry a lot of the world variety, and it's certainly better than the main islands it doesn't quite hit the same mark. The general structure of Ginormosia doesn't have it cover the same notable setpieces that build the area up, and there aren't story or character elements gluing the places together. You don't have Life Champion Gladstone and the winter cabin in the mountain area. Heck, come to think of it there isn't even an ice area yet. There's no dark-magic monarchy or vast library flavoring the desert areas. The forest area having a main story island to contribute to it makes that well covered in feeling notable and interesting though, and one of the main islands being beach themed makes it feel kind of as interesting as Port Puerto, but the town's not themed strongly enough to stand out from the other towns.

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So final closing thoughts:

Fantasy Life i rebalanced its focus to more on the gameplay, and does well at it. If you're new to Fantasy Life, you'll have plenty of fun content that'll last you a long while before it's depleted.

If you played Fantasy Life before, think about if you liked the main gameplay. If the idea of that game smoothing over all the kinks and roadblocks between shuffling Lives around and a lot of foot travel, that's improved immensely.

Decorating your island/houses is leaps better. Even if you didn't like it in the original if you've got some creative desire it's very nice to make something with.

Just keep in mind going in that you won't get characters or story comparable to the original game. It's simpler. I'd love to see some kind of DLC dip into original Fantasy Life levels of dialogue and character development.

Running out of text limit so that's all for now. Hopefully this gave some helpful perspective.

I played the first one on the 3DS, I already know this game is going to be a mega banger. Cant wait to blissfully spend 10% of my lifetime on this game. Absolutely get it if you loved Fantasy Life on the 3DS.

Pretty similar to the one on DS (although not the same game).

If you don't like grinding, just forget this even exists, the "game" is all about that.
Combat and gathering are very basic, crafting is a mini-game, and you do all of that over and over with very little variation.

If that is not stopping you, then there is a decent amount of content, and unlike the previous game you can switch life on the fly (interract with a mining deposit and you switch to miner, click to attack and you switch to your last combat profession, go to a crafting table and you will switch based on the recipe you pick).
You can also change at any time from the menu.
This removes the most annoying part of the previous game.

I would have liked the skill trees to be more interesting and to unlock more interesting stuff rather than mostly stats.